| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from Options by O. Henry: opening, "I am at your service, of course, but--er--as I haven't been
apprized of the circumstances of the case, I--er--"
"Oh," said Miss Lowery, beaming for a moment, "it ain't as bad as
that--there ain't any circumstances. It's the first time I've ever
been in New York except once when I was five years old, and I had no
idea it was such a big town. And I met Mr.--Mr. Snip on the street
and asked him about a friend of mine, and he brought me here and asked
me to wait."
"I advise you, Miss Lowery," said Tripp, "to tell Mr. Chalmers all.
He's a friend of mine" (I was getting used to it by this time), "and
he'll give you the right tip."
Options |
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from A Daughter of Eve by Honore de Balzac: Nathan had put his whole fortune into that newspaper he would lose it.
This judgment, so apparently just and clear-cut, though brief and
given by a man who fathomed a matter in which he had no interest,
alarmed Madame de Vandenesse.
"Do you take an interest in him?" asked her husband.
"Only as a man whose mind interests me and whose conversation I like."
This reply was made so naturally that the count suspected nothing.
The next day at four o'clock, Marie and Raoul had a long conversation
together, in a low voice, in Madame d'Espard's salon. The countess
expressed fears which Raoul dissipated, only too happy to destroy by
epigrams the conjugal judgment. Nathan had a revenge to take. He
|
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from Juana by Honore de Balzac: to express in its general sense, a prostitute. In those days women of
that sort had a certain rank in the world of which nothing in our day
can give an idea. Ninon de l'Enclos and Marian Delorme have alone
played, in France, the role of the Imperias, Catalinas, and Maranas
who, in preceding centuries, gathered around them the cassock, gown,
and sword. An Imperia built I forget which church in Rome in a frenzy
of repentance, as Rhodope built, in earlier times, a pyramid in Egypt.
The name Marana, inflicted at first as a disgrace upon the singular
family with which we are now concerned, had ended by becoming its
veritable name and by ennobling its vice by incontestable antiquity.
One day, a day of opulence or of penury I know not which, for this
|
